Awards

Staff Pick

I'm used to reading good authors, but Verghese is so good, he blew me away. He writes with such detached compassion that Ethiopia becomes your homeland, and Matron, Ghosh, Marion and Shiva Stone, and all the rest become your friends, your neighbors, and your family. Do yourself a favor: read this book.Recommended by Kathy H, Powell's Books at PDX

Cutting for Stone is both an excellent read and a gift that keeps on giving: I've recommended this book to many, many customers — some of whom have come back to thank me personally and buy more copies as gifts. The plot travels in many diverse directions, but eventually converges to create one solid story; you'll love, laugh, hate, and cry throughout its panoramic unfolding. This is such an outstanding novel, one can only dream of an encore.Recommended by Donna, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother's death and their father's disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles — and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

Review:

"An enormously impressive first novel. . . . Many physicians write eloquently about their work — Atul Gawande and Oliver Sacks come readily to mind — but Abraham Verghese may be the first to use his medical expertise to reconfigure a hallowed literary genre: the epic novel. [He] has written a riveting tale . . . while interweaving graphic physiological details and lots of shoptalk. . . . A powerful story of abandonment, betrayal, and redemptive (and destructive) love. . . . Page-turning." Nan Wiener, San Francisco Magazine

Review:

"Cutting for Stone is nothing short of masterful — a riveting tale of love, medicine, and the complex dynamic of twin brothers. It is beautifully conceived and written. The settings are wonderfully pictorial. There is no doubt in my mind that Cutting for Stone will endure in the permanent literature of our time." Richard Selzer, surgeon and author of Letters to a Young Doctor

Review:

"A grand, exquisitely drawn story of twin brothers that ranges from birth to death, and from Ethiopia to America. In Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese shows us with brilliance and passion where healing comes from, and how we move through suffering to embrace life. In the hands of this compassionate doctor/writer, the details are indelible: A wonderful book." Samuel Shem, author of The House of God and The Spirit of the Place

Review:

Review:

"[A] fantastic evocation of the life of a pair of twins whose mother was a nun and father an English surgeon." William J. Cobb, Houston Chronicle

Review:

"Verghese is a novelist revealing extraordinary skill. With Cutting for Stone, [he] proves his gift [and] shares with us a story that cuts into our hearts and burns into our minds. . . . This epic of family and love is told largely from the operating theater as surgeon and soul become one." Adera Causey, Chattanooga Free Press

About the Author

Abraham Verghese is Professor and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was the founding director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, where he is now an adjunct professor. He is the author of My Own Country, a 1994 NBCC Finalist and a Time Best Book of the Year, and The Tennis Partner, a New York Times Notable Book. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has published essays and short stories that have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Granta, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

I'm used to reading good authors, but Verghese is so good, he blew me away. He writes with such detached compassion that Ethiopia becomes your homeland, and Matron, Ghosh, Marion and Shiva Stone, and all the rest become your friends, your neighbors, and your family. Do yourself a favor: read this book.

by Kathy H

"Staff Pick"
by Donna,

Cutting for Stone is both an excellent read and a gift that keeps on giving: I've recommended this book to many, many customers — some of whom have come back to thank me personally and buy more copies as gifts. The plot travels in many diverse directions, but eventually converges to create one solid story; you'll love, laugh, hate, and cry throughout its panoramic unfolding. This is such an outstanding novel, one can only dream of an encore.

by Donna

"Review"
by Nan Wiener, San Francisco Magazine,
"An enormously impressive first novel. . . . Many physicians write eloquently about their work — Atul Gawande and Oliver Sacks come readily to mind — but Abraham Verghese may be the first to use his medical expertise to reconfigure a hallowed literary genre: the epic novel. [He] has written a riveting tale . . . while interweaving graphic physiological details and lots of shoptalk. . . . A powerful story of abandonment, betrayal, and redemptive (and destructive) love. . . . Page-turning."

"Review"
by Richard Selzer, surgeon and author of Letters to a Young Doctor,
"Cutting for Stone is nothing short of masterful — a riveting tale of love, medicine, and the complex dynamic of twin brothers. It is beautifully conceived and written. The settings are wonderfully pictorial. There is no doubt in my mind that Cutting for Stone will endure in the permanent literature of our time."

"Review"
by Samuel Shem, author of The House of God and The Spirit of the Place,
"A grand, exquisitely drawn story of twin brothers that ranges from birth to death, and from Ethiopia to America. In Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese shows us with brilliance and passion where healing comes from, and how we move through suffering to embrace life. In the hands of this compassionate doctor/writer, the details are indelible: A wonderful book."

"Review"
by Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
"[R]ead it for the medical education. Or for the characters. Or for the action, or for the dynamics of an unhappy family. But do yourself a favor. Read it."

"Review"
by John Repp, Cleveland Plain-Dealer,
"At its best, the first novel from physician Verghese displays the virtues so evident in his bestselling and much-lauded memoirs."

"Review"
by William J. Cobb, Houston Chronicle,
"[A] fantastic evocation of the life of a pair of twins whose mother was a nun and father an English surgeon."

"Review"
by Adera Causey, Chattanooga Free Press,
"Verghese is a novelist revealing extraordinary skill. With Cutting for Stone, [he] proves his gift [and] shares with us a story that cuts into our hearts and burns into our minds. . . . This epic of family and love is told largely from the operating theater as surgeon and soul become one."

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